Paris, June 3, 1795.
We arrived here early on Saturday, and as no stranger coming to Paris, whether a native of France, or a foreigner, is suffered to remain longer than three days without a particular permission, our first care was to present ourselves to the Committee of the section where we lodge, and, on giving proper security for our good conduct, we have had this permission extended to a Decade.
I approached Paris with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, as though I expected the scenes which had passed in it, and the moral changes it had undergone, would be every where visible; but the gloomy ideas produced by a visit to this metropolis, are rather the effect of mental association than external objects. Palaces and public buildings still remain; but we recollect that they are become the prisons of misfortune, or the rewards of baseness. We see the same hotels, but their owners are wandering over the world, or have expired on the scaffold. Public places are not less numerous, nor less frequented; but, far from inspiring gaiety, we behold them with regret and disgust, as proofs of the national levity and want of feeling.
I could almost wish, for the credit of the French character, to have found some indications that the past was not so soon consigned to oblivion. It is true, the reign of Robespierre and his sanguinary tribunal are execrated in studied phrases; yet is it enough to adopt humanity as a mode, to sing the Revel du Peuple in preference to the Marseillois, or to go to a theatre with a well-powdered head, instead of cropped locks a la Jacobin? But the people forget, that while they permitted, and even applauded, the past horrors, they were also accessary to them, and if they rejoice at their termination, their sensibility does not extend to compunction; they cast their sorrows away, and think it sufficient to exhibit their reformation in dressing and dancing—
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"Yet hearts refin'd their sadden'd tint retain,
"The sigh is pleasure, and the jest is pain." Sheridan. |
French refinements are not, however, of this poetical kind.*
* This too great facility of the Parisians has been commented upon by an anonymous writer in the following terms: "At Paris, where more than fifty victims were dragged daily to the scaffold, the theatres never failed to overflow, and that on the Place de la Revolution was not the least frequented. The public, in their way every evening to the Champs Ellisees, continued uninterruptedly to cross the stream of blood that deluged this fatal spot with the most dreadful indifference; and now, though these days of horror are scarcely passed over our heads, one would suppose them ages removed—so little are we sensible that we are dancing, as it were, on a platform of dead bodies. Well may we say, respecting those events which have not reached ourselves—
But if we desire earnestly that the same misfortunes should not return, we must keep them always present in our recollection."
The practice of the government appears to depart every day more widely from its professions; and the moderate harangues of the tribune are often succeeded by measures as arbitrary as those which are said to be exploded.—Perhaps the Convention begin to perceive their mistake in supposing that they can maintain a government against the inclination of the people, without the aid of tyranny. They expected at the same time that they decried Robespierre, to retain all the power he possessed. Hence, their assumed principles and their conduct are generally at variance; and, divided between despotism and weakness, they arrest the printers of pamphlets and newspapers one day, and are obliged to liberate them the next.—They exclaim publicly against the system of terror, yet secretly court the assistance of its agents.—They affect to respect the liberty of the press, yet every new publication has to defend itself against the whole force of the government, if it happen to censure a single member of the reigning party.—Thus, the Memoirs of Dumouriez had circulated nearly through all Europe, yet it was not without much risk, and after a long warfare, that they were printed in France.*
*On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim—that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published.
I know not if it be attributable to these political inconsistencies that the calm which has succeeded the late disorders is little more than external. The minds of the people are uncommonly agitated, and every one expresses either hope or apprehension of some impending event. The royalists, amidst their ostensible persecutions, are particularly elated; and I have been told, that many conspicuous revolutionists already talk of emigration.
I am just returned from a day's ramble, during which I have met with various subjects of unpleasant meditation. About dinner-time I called on an old Chevalier de St. Louis and his lady, who live in the Fauxbourg St. Germain. When I knew them formerly, they had a handsome annuity on the Hotel de Ville, and were in possession of all the comforts necessary to their declining years. To-day the door was opened by a girl of dirty appearance, the house looked miserable, the furniture worn, and I found the old couple over a slender meal of soup maigre and eggs, without wine or bread. Our revolutionary adventures, as is usual on all meetings of this kind, were soon communicated; and I learned, that almost before they knew what was passing around them, Monsieur du G————'s forty years' service, and his croix, had rendered him suspected, and that he and his wife were taken from their beds at midnight and carried to prison. Here they consumed their stock of ready money, while a guard, placed in their house, pillaged what was moveable, and spoiled what could not be pillaged. Soon after the ninth of Thermidor they were released, but they returned to bare walls, and their annuity, being paid in assignats, now scarcely affords them a subsistence.—Monsieur du G———— is near seventy, and Madame is become helpless from a nervous complaint, the effect of fear and confinement; and if this depreciation of the paper should continue, these poor people may probably die of absolute want.
I dined with a relation of the Marquise's, and in the afternoon we called by appointment on a person who is employed by the Committee of National Domains, and who has long promised my friend to facilitate the adjustment of some of the various claims which the government has on her property. This man was originally a valet to the brother of the Marquise: at the revolution he set up a shop, became a bankrupt, and a furious Jacobin, and, in the end, a member of a Revolutionary Committee. In the last capacity he found means to enrich himself, and intimidate his creditors so as to obtain a discharge of his debts, without the trouble of paying them.*
* "It was common for men in debt to procure themselves to be made members of a revolutionary committee, and then force their creditors to give them a receipt in full, under the fear of being imprisoned." Clauzel's Report, Oct. 13, 1794. I am myself acquainted with an old lady, who was confined four months, for having asked one of these patriots for three hundred livres which he owed her.
—Since the dissolution of the Committees, he has contrived to obtain the situation I have mentioned, and now occupies superb apartments in an hotel, amply furnished with the proofs of his official dexterity, and the perquisites of patriotism.
The humiliating vicissitudes occasioned by the revolution induced Madame de la F———— to apply to this democratic parvenu, [Upstart.] whose office at present gives him the power, and whose former obligations to her family (by whom he was brought up) she hoped would add the disposition, to serve her.—The gratitude she expected has, however, ended only in delays and disappointments, and the sole object of my commission was to get some papers which she had entrusted to him out of his possession.
When we enquired if the Citizen was at home, a servant, not in livery, informed us Monsieur was dressing, but that if we would walk in, he would let Monsieur know we were there. We passed through a dining parlour, where we saw the remains of a dessert, coffee, &c. and were assailed by the odours of a plentiful repast. As we entered the saloon, we heard the servant call at the door of an adjoining parlour, "Monsieur, voici deux Citoyennes et un Citoyen qui vous demandent." ["Sir, here are two female citizens and one male citizen enquiring for you."] When Monsieur appeared, he apologized with an air of graciousness for the impossibility he had been under of getting my friend's affairs arranged—protested he was accable [Oppressed..]—that he had scarcely an instant at his own disposal—that enfin the responsibility of people in office was so terrible, and the fatigue so assommante, [Overpowering.] that nothing but the purest civism, and a heart penetre de l'amour de la patrie, [Penetrated with the love of his country.] could enable him to persevere in the task imposed on him. As for the papers we required, he would endeavour to find them, though his cabinet was really so filled with petitions and certificates of all sorts, que des malheureux lui avoient addresses, [Addressed to him by unfortunate people.] that it would not be very easy to find them at present; and, with this answer, which we should have smiled at from M. de Choiseul or Sartine, we were obliged to be satisfied. We then talked of the news of the day, and he lamented that the aristocrats were still restless and increasing in number, and that notwithstanding the efforts of the Convention to diffuse a spirit of philosophy, it was too evident there was yet much fanaticism among the people.
As we rose to depart, Madame entered, dressed for visiting, and decorated with bracelets on her wrists and above her elbows, medallions on her waists and neck, and, indeed, finery wherever it could possibly be bestowed. We observed her primitive condition of a waiting-woman still operated, and that far from affecting the language of her husband, she retained a great deference for rank, and was solicitous to insinuate that she was secretly of a superior way of thinking. As we left the room together, she made advances to an acquaintance with my companions (who were people of condition); and having occasion to speak to a person at the door, as she uttered the word Citoyen she looked at us with an expression which she intended should imply the contempt and reluctance with which she made use of it.
I have in general remarked, that the republicans are either of the species I have just been describing, waiters, jockies, gamblers, bankrupts, and low scribblers, living in great splendour, or men taken from laborious professions, more sincere in their principles, more ignorant and brutal—and who dissipate what they have gained in gross luxury, because they have been told that elegance and delicacy are worthy only of Sybarites, and that the Greeks and Romans despised both. These patriots are not, however, so uninformed, nor so disinterested, as to suppose they are to serve their country without serving themselves; and they perfectly understand, that the rich are their legal patrimony, and that it is enjoined them by their mission to pillage royalists and aristocrats.*
—Yours.
* Garat observes, it was a maxim of Danton, "Que ceux qui fesaient les affaires de la republique devaient aussi faireles leurs," that who undertook the care of the republic should also take care of themselves. This tenet, however, seems common to the friends of both.
Paris, June 6, 1795.
I had scarcely concluded my last, when I received advice of the death of Madame de la F————; and though I have, almost from the time we quitted the Providence, thought she was declining, and that such an event was probable, it has, nevertheless, both shocked and grieved me.
Exclusively of her many good and engaging qualities, which were reasonable objects of attachment, Madame de la F———— was endeared to me by those habits of intimacy that often supply the want of merit, and make us adhere to our early friendships, even when not sanctioned by our maturer judgment. Madame de la F———— never became entirely divested of the effects of a convent education; but if she retained a love of trifling amusements, and a sort of infantine gaiety, she likewise continued pious, charitable, and strictly attentive not only to the duties, but to the decorum, essential in the female character and merits of this sort are, I believe, now more rare than those in which she might be deemed deficient.
I was speaking of her this morning to a lady of our acquaintance, who acquiesced in my friendly eulogiums, but added, in a tone of superiority, "C'etoit pourtant une petite femme bien minutieuse—she always put me out of patience with her birds and her flowers, her levees of poor people, and her persevering industry in frivolous projects." My friend was, indeed, the most feminine creature in the world, and this is a flippant literary lady, who talks in raptures of the Greeks and Romans, calls Rousseau familiarly Jean Jaques, frisks through the whole circle of science at the Lyceum, and has an utter contempt both for personal neatness and domestic oeconomy. How would Madame de Sevigne wonder, could she behold one of these modern belles esprits, with which her country, as well as England, abounds? In our zeal for reforming the irregular orthography and housewifely penmanship of the last century, we are all become readers, and authors, and critics. I do not assert, that the female mind is too much cultivated, but that it is too generally so; and that we encourage a taste for attainments not always compatible with the duties and occupations of domestic life. No age has, I believe, produced so many literary ladies as the present;* yet I cannot learn that we are at all improved in morals, or that domestic happiness is more universal than when, instead of writing sonnets to dew-drops or daisies,** we copied prayers and recipes, in spelling similar to that of Stowe or Hollingshed.
* Let me not be supposed to undervalue the female authors of the present day. There are some who, uniting great talents with personal worth, are justly entitled to our respect and admiration. The authoress of "Cecilia," or the Miss Lees, cannot be confounded with the proprietors of all the Castles, Forests, Groves, Woods, Cottages, and Caverns, which are so alluring in the catalogue of a circulating library. ** Mrs. Smith's beautiful Sonnets have produced sonnetteers for every object in nature, visible or invisible; and her elegant translations of Petrarch have procured the Italian bard many an English dress that he would have been ashamed to appear in.
—We seem industrious to make every branch of education a vehicle for inspiring a premature taste for literary amusements; and our old fashioned moral adages in writing-books are replaced by scraps from "Elegant Extracts," while print-work and embroidery represent scenes from poems or novels. I allow, that the subjects formerly pourtrayed by the needle were not pictoresque, yet, the tendency considered, young ladies might as well employ their silk or pencils in exhibiting Daniel in the lions' den, or Joseph and his brethren, as Sterne's Maria, or Charlotte and Werter.
You will forgive this digression, which I have been led into on hearing the character of Madame de la F———— depreciated, because she was only gentle and amiable, and did not read Plutarch, nor hold literary assemblies. It is, in truth, a little amende I owe her memory, for I may myself have sometimes estimated her too lightly, and concluded my own pursuits more rational than hers, when possibly they were only different. Her death has left an impression on my mind, which the turbulence of Paris is not calculated to soothe; but the short time we have to stay, and the number of people I must see, oblige me to conquer both my regret and my indolence, and to pass a great part of the day in running from place to place.
I have been employed all this morning in executing some female commissions, which, of course, led me to milliners, mantua-makers, &c. These people now recommend fashions by saying one thing is invented by Tallien's wife, and another by Merlin de Thionville, or some other Deputy's mistress; and the genius of these elegantes has contrived, by a mode of dressing the hair which lengthens the neck, and by robes with an inch of waist, to give their countrywomen an appearance not much unlike that of a Bar Gander.
I saw yesterday a relation of Madame de la F————, who is in the army, and whom I formerly mentioned as having met when we passed through Dourlens. He was for some months suspended, and in confinement, but is now restored to his rank, and ordered on service. He asked me if I ever intended to visit France again. I told him I had so little reason to be satisfied with my treatment, that I did not imagine I should.—"Yes, (returned he,) but if the republic should conquer Italy, and bring all its treasures to Paris, as has lately been suggested in the Convention, we shall tempt you to return, in spite of yourself."*
*The project of pillaging Italy of its most valuable works of art was suggested by the philosophic Abbe Gregoire, a constitutional Bishop, as early as September 1794, because, as he alledged, the chefs d'ouvres of the Greek republic ought not to embellish a country of slaves.
—I told him, I neither doubted their intending such a scheme, nor the possibility of its success, though it was not altogether worthy of philosophers and republicans to wage war for Venus's and Appollos, and to sacrifice the lives of one part of their fellow-citizens, that the rest might be amused with pictures and statues.—"That's not our affair (says Monsieur de ————). Soldiers do not reason. And if the Convention should have a fancy to pillage the Emperor of China's palace, I see no remedy but to set sail with the first fair wind,"—"I wish, (said his sister, who was the only person present,) instead of being under such orders, you had escaped from the service." "Yes, (returned the General quickly,) and wander about Europe like Dumouriez, suspected and despised by all parties." I observed, Dumouriez was an adventurer, and that on many accounts it was necessary to guard against him. He said, he did not dispute the necessity or even the justice of the conduct observed towards him, but that nevertheless I might be assured it had operated as an effectual check to those who might, otherwise, have been tempted to follow Dumouriez's example; "And we have now (added he, in a tone between gaiety and despair,) no alternative but obedience or the guillotine."—I have transcribed the substance of this conversation, as it confirms what I have frequently been told, that the fate of Dumouriez, however merited, is one great cause why no desertion of importance has since taken place.
I was just now interrupted by a noise and shouting near my window, and could plainly distinguish the words Scipio and Solon uttered in a tone of taunt and reproach. Not immediately comprehending how Solon or Scipio could be introduced in a fray at Paris, I dispatched Angelique to make enquiry; and at her return I learned that a croud of boys were following a shoemaker of the neighbourhood, who, while he was member of a revolutionary Committee, had chosen to unite in his person the glories of both Rome and Greece, of the sword and gown, and had taken unto himself the name of Scipio Solon. A decree of the Convention some weeks since enjoined all such heroes and sages to resume their original appellations, and forbade any person, however ardent his patriotism, to distinguish himself by the name of Brutus, Timoleon, or any other but that which he derived from his Christian parents. The people, it seems, are not so obedient to the decree as those whom it more immediately concerns; and as the above-mentioned Scipio Solon had been detected in various larcenies, he is not allowed to quit his shop without being reproached with his thefts, and his Greek and Roman appellations.
—I am, &c.
Paris, June 8, 1795.
Yesterday being Sunday, and to-day the Decade, we have had two holidays successively, though, since the people have been more at liberty to manifest their opinions, they give a decided preference to the Christian festival over that of the republic.*
* This was only at Paris, where the people, from their number, are less manageable, and of course more courageous. In the departments, the same cautious timidity prevailed, and appeared likely to continue.
—They observe the former from inclination, and the latter from necessity; so that between the performance of their religious duties, and the sacrifice to their political fears, a larger portion of time will be deducted from industry than was gained by the suppression of the Saints' days. The Parisians, however, seem to acquiesce very readily in this compromise, and the philosophers of the Convention, who have so often declaimed against the idleness occasioned by the numerous fetes of the old calendar, obstinately persist in the adoption of a new one, which increases the evil they pretend to remedy.
If the people are to be taken from their labour for such a number of days, it might as well be in the name of St. Genevieve or St. Denis, as of the Decade, and the Saints'-days have at least this advantage, that the forenoons are passed in churches; whereas the republican festivals, dedicated one to love, another to stoicism, and so forth, not conveying any very determinate idea, are interpreted to mean only an obligation to do nothing, or to pass some supernumerary hours at the cabaret. [Alehouse.]
I noticed with extreme pleasure yesterday, that as many of the places of public worship as are permitted to be open were much crouded, and that religion appears to have survived the loss of those exterior allurements which might be supposed to have rendered it peculiarly attractive to the Parisians. The churches at present, far from being splendid, are not even decent, the walls and windows still bear traces of the Goths (or, if you will, the philosophers,) and in some places service is celebrated amidst piles of farage, sacks, casks, or lumber appertaining to the government—who, though they have by their own confession the disposal of half the metropolis, choose the churches in preference for such purposes.*
* It has frequently been asserted in the Convention, that by emigrations, banishments, and executions, half Paris had become the property of the public.
—Yet these unseemly and desolate appearances do not prevent the attendance of congregations more numerous, and, I think, more fervent, than were usual when the altars shone with the offerings of wealth, and the walls were covered with the more interesting decorations of pictures and tapestry.
This it is not difficult to account for. Many who used to perform these religious duties with negligence, or indifference, are now become pious, and even enthusiastic—and this not from hypocrisy or political contradiction, but from a real sense of the evils of irreligion, produced by the examples and conduct of those in whom such a tendency has been most remarkable.—It must, indeed, be acknowledged, that did Christianity require an advocate, a more powerful one need not be found, than in a retrospect of the crimes and sufferings of the French since its abolition.
Those who have made fortunes by the revolution (for very few have been able to preserve them) now begin to exhibit equipages; and they hope to render the people blind to this departure from their visionary systems of equality, by foregoing the use of arms and liveries—as if the real difference between the rich and the poor was not constituted rather by essential accommodation, than extrinsic embellishments, which perhaps do not gratify the eyes of the possessor a second time, and are, probably of all branches of luxury, the most useful. The livery of servants can be of very little importance, whether morally or politically considered—it is the act of maintaining men in idleness, who might be more profitably employed, that makes the keeping a great number exceptionable; nor is a man more degraded by going behind a carriage with a hat and feather, than with a bonnet de police, or a plain beaver; but he eats just as much, and earns just as little, equipped as a Carmagnole, as though glittering in the most superb gala suit.*
* In their zeal to imitate the Roman republicans, the French seem to forget that a political consideration very different from the love of simplicity, or an idea of the dignity of man, made the Romans averse from distinguishing their slaves by any external indication. They were so numerous that it was thought impolitic to furnish them with such means of knowing their own strength in case of a revolt.
The marks of service cannot be more degrading than service itself; and it is the mere chicane of philosophy to extend reform only to cuffs and collars, while we do not dispense with the services annexed to them. A valet who walks the street in his powdering jacket, disdains a livery as much as the fiercest republican, and with as much reason—for there is no more difference between domestic occupation performed in one coat or another, than there is between the party-coloured habit and the jacket.
If the luxury of carriages be an evil, it must be because the horses employed in them consume the produce of land which might be more beneficially cultivated: but the gilding, fringe, salamanders, and lions, in all their heraldic positions, afford an easy livelihood to manufacturers and artisans, who might not be capable of more laborious occupations.
I believe it will generally be found, that most of the republican reforms are of this description—calculated only to impose on the people, and disguising, by frivolous prohibitions, their real inutility. The affectation of simplicity in a nation already familiarized with luxury, only tends to divert the wealth of the rich to purposes which render it more destructive. Vanity and ostentation, when they are excluded from one means of gratification, will always seek another; and those who, having the means, cannot distinguish themselves by ostensible splendour, will often do so by domestic profusion.*
* "Sectaries (says Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting, speaking of the republicans under Cromwell) have no ostensible enjoyments; their pleasures are private, comfortable and gross. The arts of civilized society are not calculated for men who mean to rise on the ruins of established order." Judging by comparison, I am persuaded these observations are yet more applicable to the political, than the religious opinions of the English republicans of that period; for, in these respects, there is no difference between them and the French of the present day, though there is a wide one between an Anabaptist and the disciples of Boulanger and Voltaire.
—Nor can it well be disputed, that a gross luxury is more pernicious than an elegant one; for the former consumes the necessaries of life wantonly, while the latter maintains numerous hands in rendering things valuable by the workmanship which are little so in themselves.
Every one who has been a reflecting spectator of the revolution will acknowledge the justice of these observations. The agents and retainers of government are the general monopolizers of the markets, and these men, who are enriched by peculation, and are on all occasions retailing the cant phrases of the Convention, on the purete des moeurs republicains, et la luxe de la ci-devant Noblesse, [The purity of republican manners, and the luxury of the ci-devant Noblesse.] exhibit scandalous exceptions to the national habits of oeconomy, at a time too when others more deserving are often compelled to sacrifice even their essential accommodations to a more rigid compliance with them.*
* Lindet, in a report on the situation of the republic, declares, that since the revolution the consumption of wines and every article of luxury has been such, that very little has been left for exportation. I have selected the following specimens of republican manners, from many others equally authentic, as they may be of some utility to those who would wish to estimate what the French have gained in this respect by a change of government. "In the name of the French people the Representatives sent to Commune Affranchie (Lyons) to promote the felicity of its inhabitants, order the Committee of Sequestration to send them immediately two hundred bottles of the best wine that can be procured, also five hundred bottles of claret, of prime quality, for their own table. For this purpose the commission are authorized to take of the sequestration, wherever the above wine can be found. Done at Commune Affranchie, thirteenth Nivose, second year. (Signed) "Albitte, "Fouche, "Deputies of the National Convention."
Extract of a denunciation of Citizen Boismartin against Citizen Laplanche, member of the National Convention: "The twenty-fourth of Brumaire, in the second year of the republic, the Administrators of the district of St. Lo gave orders to the municipality over which I at that time presided, to lodge the Representative of the people, Laplanche, and General Siphert, in the house of Citizen Lemonnier, who was then under arrest at Thorigni. In introducing one of the founders of the republic, and a French General, into this hospitable mansion, we thought to put the property of our fellow-citizen under the safeguard of all the virtues; but, alas, how were we mistaken! They had no sooner entered the house, than the provisions of every sort, the linen, clothes, furniture, trinkets, books, plate, carriages, and even title-deeds, all disappeared; and, as if they purposely insulted our wretchedness, while we were reduced to the sad necessity of distributing with a parsimonious hand a few ounces of black bread to our fellow-citizens, the best bread, pillaged from Citizen Lemonnier, was lavished by buckets full to the horses of General Siphert, and the Representative Laplanche.—The Citizen Lemonnier, who is seventy years of age, having now recovered his liberty, which he never deserved to lose, finds himself so entirely despoiled, that he is at present obliged to live at an inn; and, of property to the amount of sixty thousand livres, he has nothing left but a single spoon, which he took with him when carried to one of the Bastilles in the department de la Manche." The chief defence of Laplanche consisted in allegations that the said Citizen Lemonnier was rich, and a royalist, and that he had found emblems of royalism and fanaticism about the house.
At the house of one of our common friends, I met ————, and so little did I imagine that he had escaped all the revolutionary perils to which he had been exposed, that I could almost have supposed myself in the regions of the dead, or that he had been permitted to quit them, for his being alive scarcely seemed less miraculous or incredible. As I had not seen him since 1792, he gave me a very interesting detail of his adventures, and his testimony corroborates the opinion generally entertained by those who knew the late King, that he had much personal courage, and that he lost his crown and his life by political indecision, and an humane, but ill-judged, unwillingness to reduce his enemies by force. He assured me, the Queen might have been conveyed out of France previous to the tenth of August, if she would have agreed to leave the King and her children behind; that she had twice consulted him on the subject; but, persisting in her resolution not to depart unaccompanied by her family, nothing practicable could be devised, and she determined to share their fate.*
* The gentleman here alluded to has great talents, and is particularly well acquainted with some of the most obscure and disastrous periods of the French revolution. I have reason to believe, whenever it is consistent with his own safety, he will, by a genuine relation, expose many of the popular falsehoods by which the public have been misled.
This, as well as many other instances of tenderness and heroism, which distinguished the Queen under her misfortunes, accord but ill with the vices imputed to her; and were not such imputations encouraged to serve the cause of faction, rather than that of morality, these inconsistencies would have been interpreted in her favour, and candour have palliated or forgotten the levities of her youth, and remembered only the sorrows and the virtues by which they were succeeded.
I had, in compliance with your request on my first arrival in France, made a collection of prints of all the most conspicuous actors in the revolution; but as they could not be secreted so easily as other papers, my fears overcame my desire of obliging you, and I destroyed them successively, as the originals became proscribed or were sacrificed. Desirous of repairing my loss, I persuaded some friends to accompany me to a shop, kept by a man of whom they frequently purchased, and whom, as his principles were known to them, I might safely ask for the articles I wanted. He shook his head, while he ran over my list, and then told me, that having preferred his safety to his property, he had disposed of his prints in the same way I had disposed of mine. "At the accession of a new party, (continued he,) I always prepare for a domiciliary visit, clear my windows and shelves of the exploded heads, and replace them by those of their rivals. Nay, I assure you, since the revolution, our trade is become as precarious as that of a gamester. The Constitutionalists, indeed, held out pretty well, but then I was half ruined by the fall of the Brissotins; and, before I could retrieve a little by the Hebertists and Dantonists, the too were out of fashion."— "Well, but the Robespierrians—you must have gained by them?"—"Why, true; Robespierre and Marat, and Chalier, answered well enough, because the royalists generally placed them in their houses to give themselves an air of patriotism, yet they are gone after the rest.—Here, however, (says he, taking down an engraving of the Abbe Sieyes,) is a piece of merchandize that I have kept through all parties, religions, and constitutions—et le voila encore a la mode, ["And now you see him in fashion again."] mounted on the wrecks, and supported by the remnants of both his friends and enemies. Ah! c'est un fin matois." ["Ah! He's a knowing one."]
This conversation passed in a gay tone, though the man added, very seriously, that the instability of popular factions, and their intolerance towards each other, had obliged him to destroy to the amount of some thousand livres, and that he intended, if affairs did not change, to quit business.
Of all the prints I enquired for, I only got Barrere, Sieyes, and a few others of less note. Your last commissions I have executed more successfully, for though the necessaries of life are almost unpurchaseable, articles of taste, books, perfumery, &c. are cheaper than ever. This is unfortunately the reverse of what ought to be the case, but the augmentation in the price of provisions is to be accounted for in various ways, and that things of the description I allude to do not bear a price in proportion is doubtless to be attributed to the present poverty of those who used to be the purchasers of them; while the people who are become rich under the new government are of a description to seek for more substantial luxuries than books and essences.—I should however observe, that the venders of any thing not perishable, and who are not forced to sell for their daily subsistence, are solicitous to evade every demand for any article which is to be paid for in assignats.
I was looking at some trinkets in a shop at the Palais Royal, and on my asking the mistress of it if the ornaments were silver, she smiled significantly, and replied, she had nothing silver nor gold in the shop, but if I chose to purchase en espece, she would show me whatever I desired: "Mais pour le papier nous n'en avons que trop." ["In coin, but for paper we have already too much of it."]
Many of the old shops are nearly empty, and the little trade which yet exists is carried on by a sort of adventurers who, without being bred to any one trade, set up half a dozen, and perhaps disappear three months afterwards. They are, I believe, chiefly men who have speculated on the assignats, and as soon as they have turned their capital in a mercantile way a short time, become apprehensive of the paper, realize it, and retire; or, becoming bankrupts by some unlucky monopoly, begin a new career of patriotism.
There is, properly speaking, no money in circulation, yet a vast quantity is bought and sold. Annuitants, possessors of moderate landed property, &c., finding it impossible to subsist on their incomes, are forced to have recourse to the little specie they have reserved, and exchange it for paper. Immense sums in coin are purchased by the government, to make good the balance of their trade with the neutral countries for provisions, so that I should suppose, if this continue a few months, very little will be left in the country.
One might be tempted to fancy there is something in the atmosphere of Paris which adapts the minds of its inhabitants to their political situation. They talk of the day appointed for a revolt a fortnight before, as though it were a fete, and the most timid begin to be inured to a state of agitation and apprehension, and to consider it as a natural vicissitude that their lives should be endangered periodically.
A commission has been employed for some time in devising another new constitution, which is to be proposed to the Assembly on the thirteenth of this month; and on that day, it is said, an effort is to be made by the royalists. They are certainly very numerous, and the interest taken in the young King is universal. In vain have the journalists been forbidden to cherish these sentiments, by publishing details concerning him: whatever escapes the walls of his prison is circulated in impatient whispers, and requires neither printing nor gazettes a la main to give it publicity.*
* Under the monarchy people disseminated anecdotes or intelligence which they did not think it safe to print, by means of these written gazettes.—I doubt if any one would venture to have recourse to them at present.
—The child is reported to be ill, and in a kind of stupefaction, so as to sit whole days without speaking or moving: this is not natural at his age, and must be the consequence of neglect, or barbarous treatment.
The Committees of Government, and indeed most of the Convention who have occasionally appeared to give tacit indications of favouring the royalists, in order to secure their support against the Jacobins, having now crushed the latter, begin to be seriously alarmed at the projects of the former.—Sevestre, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, has announced that a formidable insurrection may be expected on the twenty-fifth of Prairial, (thirteenth June,) the Deputies on mission are ordered to return, and the Assembly propose to die under the ruins of the republic. They have, notwithstanding, judged it expedient to fortify these heroic dispositions by the aid of a military force, and a large number of regular troops are in Paris and the environs. We shall certainly depart before this menacing epoch: the application for our passports was made on our first arrival, and Citizen Liebault, Principal of the Office for Foreign Affairs, who is really very civil, has promised them in a day or two.
Our journey here was, in fact, unnecessary; but we have few republican acquaintance, and those who are called aristocrats do not execute commission of this kind zealously, nor without some apprehensions of committing themselves.—You will wonder that I find time to write to you, nor do I pretend to assume much merit from it. We have not often courage to frequent public places in the evening, and, when we do, I continually dread some unlucky accident: either a riot between the Terrorists and Muscadins, within, or a military investment without. The last time we were at the theatre, a French gentleman, who was our escort, entered into a trifling altercation with a rude vulgar-looking man, in the box, who seemed to speak in a very authoritative tone, and I know not how the matter might have ended, had not a friend in the next box silenced our companion, by conveying a penciled card, which informed him the person he was disputing with was a Deputy of the Convention. We took an early opportunity of retreating, not perfectly at ease about the consequences which might ensue from Mr. ———— having ventured to differ in opinion from a Member of the Republican Legislature. Since that time we have passed our evenings in private societies, or at home; and while Mr. D———— devours new pamphlets, and Mrs. D———— and the lady we lodge with recount their mutual sufferings at Arras and St. Pelagie, I take the opportunity of writing.
—Adieu.
Paris, June 12, 1795.
The hopes and fears, plots and counterplots, of both royalists and republicans, are now suspended by the death of the young King. This event was announced on Tuesday last, and since that time the minds and conversation of the public have been entirely occupied by it. Latent suspicion, and regret unwillingly suppressed, are every where visible; and, in the fond interest taken in this child's life, it seems to be forgotten that it is the lot of man "to pass through nature to eternity," and that it was possible for him to die without being sacrificed by human malice.
All that has been said and written on original equality has not yet persuaded the people that the fate of Kings is regulated only by the ordinary dispensations of Providence; and they seem to persist in believing, that royalty, if it has not a more fortunate pre-eminence, is at least distinguished by an unusual portion of calamities.
When we recollect the various and absurd stories which have been propagated and believed at the death of Monarchs or their offspring, without even a single ground either political or physical to justify them, we cannot now wonder, when so many circumstances of every kind tend to excite suspicion, that the public opinion should be influenced, and attribute the death of the King to poison. The child is allowed to have been of a lively disposition, and, even long after his seclusion from his family, to have frequently amused himself by singing at the window of his prison, until the interest he was observed to create in those who listened under it, occasioned an order to prevent him. It is therefore extraordinary, that he should lately have appeared in a state of stupefaction, which is by no means a symptom of the disorder he is alledged to have died of, but a very common one of opiates improperly administered.*
* In order to account in some way for the state in which the young King had lately appeared, it was reported that he had been in the habit of drinking strong liquors to excess. Admitting this to be true, they must have been furnished for him, for he could have no means of procuring them.—It is not inapposite to record, that on a petition being formerly presented to the legislature from the Jacobin societies, praying that the "son of the tyrant" might be put to death, an honourable mention in the national bulletin was unanimously decreed!!!
Though this presumption, if supported by the evidence of external appearances, may seem but of little weight; when combined with others, of a moral and political nature, it becomes of considerable importance. The people, long amused by a supposed design of the Convention to place the Dauphin on the throne, were now become impatient to see their wishes realized; or, they hoped that a renewal of the representative body, which, if conducted with freedom, must infallibly lead to the accomplishment of this object, would at least deliver them from an Assembly which they considered as exhausted in talents and degraded in reputation.—These dispositions were not attempted to be concealed; they were manifested on all occasions: and a general and successful effort in favour of the Royal Prisoner was expected to take place on the thirteenth.*
* That there were such designs, and such expectations on the part of the people, is indubitable. The following extract, written and signed by one of the editors of the Moniteur, is sufficiently expressive of the temper of the public at this period; and I must observe here, that the Moniteur is to be considered as nearly equivalent to an official paper, and is always supposed to express the sense of government, by whom it is supported and paid, whatever party or system may happen to prevail: "Les esperances les plus folles se manifestent de toutes parts.— C'est a qui jettera plus promptement le masque—on dirait, a lire les ecrits qui paraissent, a entendre les conversations des gens qui se croient dans les confidences, que c'en est fait de la republique: la Convention, secondee, poussee meme par le zele et l'energie des bons citoyens a remporte une grande victoire sur les Terroristes, sur les successeurs de Robespierre, il semble qu'elle n'ait plus qu'a proclamer la royaute. Ce qui donne lieu a toutes les conjectures plus ou moins absurdes aux quelles chacun se livre, c'est l'approche du 25 Prairial." (13th June, the day on which the new constitution was to be presented). "The most extravagant hopes, and a general impatience to throw off the mask are manifested on all sides.—To witness the publications that appear, and to hear what is said by those who believe themselves in the secret, one would suppose that it was all over with the republic.—The Convention seconded, impelled even, by the good citizens, has gained a victory over the Terrorists and the successors of Robespierre, and now it should seem that nothing remained to be done by to proclaim royalty—what particularly gives rise to these absurdities, which exist more or less in the minds of all, is the approach of the 25th Prairial." Moniteur, June 6, 1795.
Perhaps the majority of the Convention, under the hope of securing impunity for their past crimes, might have yielded to the popular impulse; but the government is no longer in the hands of those men who, having shared the power of Robespierre before they succeeded him, might, as Rabaut St. Etienne expressed himself, "be wearied of their portion of tyranny."*
* -"Je suis las de la portion de tyrannie que j'exerce."—-"I am weary of the portion of tyranny which I exercise." Rabaut de St. Etienne
—The remains of the Brissotins, with their newly-acquired authority, have vanity, interest, and revenge, to satiate; and there is no reason to suppose that a crime, which should favour these views, would, in their estimation, be considered otherwise than venial. To these are added Sieyes, Louvet, &c. men not only eager to retain their power, but known to have been of the Orleans faction, and who, if they are royalists, are not loyalists, and the last persons to whose care a son of Louis the Sixteenth ought to have been intrusted.
At this crisis, then, when the Convention could no longer temporize with the expectations it raised—when the government was divided between one party who had deposed the King to gratify their own ambition, and another who had lent their assistance in order to facilitate the pretensions of an usurper—and when the hopes of the country were anxiously fixed on him, died Louis the Seventeenth. At an age which, in common life, is perhaps the only portion of our existence unalloyed by misery, this innocent child had suffered more than is often the lot of extended years and mature guilt. He lived to see his father sent to the scaffold—to be torn from his mother and family—to drudge in the service of brutality and insolence—and to want those cares and necessaries which are not refused even to the infant mendicant, whose wretchedness contributes to the support of his parents.*
* It is unnecessary to remind the reader, that the Dauphin had been under the care of one Simon, a shoemaker, who employed him to clean his (Simon's) shoes, and in any other drudgery of which his close confinement admitted.
—When his death was announced to the Convention, Sevestre, the reporter, acknowledged that Dessault, the surgeon, had some time since declared the case to be dangerous; yet, notwithstanding policy as well as humanity required that every appearance of mystery and harshness should, on such an occasion, be avoided, the poor child continued to be secluded with the same barbarous jealousy—nor was the Princess, his sister, whose evidence on the subject would have been so conclusive, ever suffered to approach him.
No report of Dessault's opinion had till now been made public; and Dessault himself, who was an honest man, died of an inflammatory disorder four days before the Dauphin.—It is possible, he might have expressed himself too freely, respecting his patient, to those who employed him— his future discretion might be doubted—or, perhaps, he was only called in at first, that his character might give a sanction to the future operations of those who were more confided in. But whether this event is to be ascribed to natural causes, or to that of opiates, the times and circumstances render it peculiarly liable to suspicions, and the reputation of those who are involved, is not calculated to repel them. Indeed, so conscious are the advocates of government, that the imputation cannot be obviated by pleading the integrity of the parties, that they seem to rest their sole defence on the inutility of a murder, which only transfers whatever rights the House of Bourbon may be supposed to possess, from one branch of it to another. Yet those who make use of this argument are well aware of its fallaciousness: the shades of political opinion in France are extremely diversified, and a considerable part of the Royalists are also Constitutionalists, whom it will require time and necessity to reconcile to the emigrant Princes. But the young King had neither enemies nor errors—and his claims would have united the efforts and affections of all parties, from the friends of the monarchy, as it existed under Louis the Fourteenth, down to the converted Republican, who compromises with his principles, and stipulates for the title of Perpetual President.
That the removal of this child has been fortunate for those who govern, is proved by the effect: insurrections are no longer talked of, the royalists are confounded, the point of interest is no more, and a sort of despondency and confusion prevails, which is highly favourable to a continuance of the present system.—There is no doubt, but that when men's minds become more settled, the advantage of having a Prince who is capable of acting, and whose success will not be accompanied by a long minority, will conciliate all the reflecting part of the constitutional royalists, in spite of their political objections. But the people who are more under the influence of their feelings, and yield less to expediency, may not, till urged by distress and anarchy, be brought to take the same interest in the absent claimant of the throne, that they did in their infant Prince.
It is to be regretted, that an habitual and unconquerable deference for the law which excludes females from the Crown of France, should have survived monarchy itself; otherwise the tender compassion excited by the youth, beauty and sufferings of the Princess, might yet have been the means of procuring peace to this distracted country. But the French admire, lament, and leave her to her fate—